FreshNetworks Blog

The Marketing Forum on Aurora

This week FreshNetworks has been at two marketing conferences: The Richmond Events Marketing Forum and the IBDG Marketing Directors Strategy Meeting.

Both events use the format of an agenda rammed with 30-minute speed-meetings between marketing service agencies (suppliers) and Marketing Directors (delegates).

I’ve taken part in quite a few of these over the years and in case you’ve ever considered one, I thought it might be worth a quick post about my thoughts and learnings.

How do the marketing forums work?

The organisers attract delegates with the promise of a free conference pass and an opportunity to meet a pre-qualified group of suppliers. For these marketing budget holders it’s an opportunity to get out of the office, to network with peers and to discuss curent issues with some suppliers they might not otherwise cross paths with.

Suppliers pay between £7-15k to attend. That’s a lot of money for an agency, but the draw is having between 10 and 30 one-to-one meetings with the Marketing Directors – meetings that would take a lot of effort to book and attend if you tried to arrange them yourself.

A key part of making the events work is that delegates and suppliers provide lots of information about their respective businesses ahead of the event. That enables both sides to flag who they’d like to meet on the day. And after the conferences, just like speed dating, both parties say who’d they’d like to meet again.

This meeting format has been around for 20+ years (I think Richmond were the original innovators). It’s a far more focused way of doing biz dev than a stand at a trade fair, but it can be quite a bit more expensive. Relative to cold-calling I think the price per meeting is in the same range: £300-£500.

Richmond Events – Marketing Director’s Forum

This is the pinnacle of speed-meeting events. Three days on a boat moored off the Jersey coast. 150 Marketing Directors trapped with no chance of escape. Except by lifeboat.

The event has a good reputation and continues to attract a high level of delegate with marketing budgets that ranage from £100k to £50M. However over the years the number of Marketing Directors who attend has reduced sigificantly and most of the delegates now tend to be Marketing Managers or Heads of Marketing. One reason for this may be that the marketing procurement process has become more sophisiticated. As a result major appointments are rarely made purely on the basis of meeting an agency on the boat.

Got any other theories?

Compared to all the other events I have attended, Richmond definitely stand out as having the best-run most expertly-organised events. I also think they maginally clinch it on quality of delegates. As for conference sessions, based on the feedback from delegates, they were pretty good. The quality of keynote speakers is always superb. Richmond clearly invest a great deal of time and effort in picking the keynotes. And the other thing that I really enjoyed this week were the lunches and dinners. These provided excellent opportunites to venutre off the usual sales patter and really get to know some of the delegates.

IBDG Marketing Directors Strategy Meeting

I’ve been to lots of IBDG events. They are held in a hotel just off Portman Square in London. What I love about these events is that whilst they only promise you 8-10 meetings, we have often met 30 potential clients in one day. The reason for this is that the IBDG team really hustle (especially Nathan Lovegrove, our trusty account manager).

On the flip side, from the last two we attended I don’t think we’ll get a payback on our spend. That may be more to do with what we’re selling (Social Media services are still surprisingly new for UK Marketeers and only the early adopters have budget for it in 2009 or 2010). I understand that they are already booked solid for 2010 as many other suppliers have re-booked.

The other negative for me is that relative to other events, these always feel like a much harder sell (to suppliers). IBDG (understandably) try to hook you into the next event whilst your still trying to meet people on the day. But this is the last thing you need when you’re trying to focus on your next 30-minute meeting for which you have already paid. There is a cooling-off period, but it all feels rather pressured.

Other marketing forums

Similar events are organised by:

World Trade Group WTG One to One meetings

Revolution Magazine: The Revolution Forum

Forum Events: The Internet Marketing Summit

Have you been to any of these events? If so what was your experience?